The Adventures of Jeremy Simms
by LauraHuntORI
Summary: Jeremy goes to war.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **_"'__Looking his last' upon the scene of his former joys… going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips." __― _Mark Twain_, _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

**Disclaimer: **I'm a lover, not an owner. Please purchase the whole canon. No offense or infringement intended.

* * *

You don't know about me without you've read at least one of the books in the Logan family series such as "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry," "Let the Circle Be Unbroken," "The Road to Memphis," or "Mississippi Bridge," but that ain't no matter. Those books was made by Miz Mildred D. Taylor, and she told the truth, mainly. Not that I got any right to criticize anyone else on that score.

But anyway, seems like Miz Taylor figures ain't she gonna write about me no more, and while I guess I can understand that, it warn't hardly the end of the story, 'least not as far as I was concerned.

See, I think what happened was maybe for the best… I mean, what happened to me, not what happened to—

I ain't tellin' this right.

If'n you ain't read "The Road to Memphis," maybe you better git on over to amazon and get you a copy, 'cause I can't be retellin' that whole story here. Suffice it to say, I couldn't'a done anything other than what I did… and in a way I'm glad, even if it did mean Pa wouldn't look at me no more, and I gotta go fight in this war now and everything, 'cause if I hadn't needed so badly to keep Harris Mitchum from takin' the blame for somethin' that weren't noways his fault on top'a what we done to him before, maybe nothing would _ever_ have changed.

I was sorry Pa ain't let me said goodbye to Ma. But Pa is just Pa, and there ain't no changin' him, no matter what happens or who's hurt.

But at least Stacey and them was willin' to speak to me 'fore I left, so in a way… I did get a 'family' send off after all when I left for the war, even if that family wasn't my own.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **_Ye must be born again. _– John 3:7b, Holy Bible, KJV

**Disclaimer: **I'm a lover, not an owner. Please purchase the whole canon. No offense or infringement intended.

* * *

Pa told me I was dead to him, but fact to business I felt right lively. Like maybe I'd've just been born. You ever watch a critter come into this world? Plenty on 'em, first thing they do is try to stand up all wobbly, and walk to they Ma.

That was me.

Well, I didn't make it to Ma, Pa seen ta that, but… I walked alright. And kept walkin'.

Walked right on in to the Wallace store and bought a bus ticket to Jackson. Bought a piece of horehound candy along with the bus ticket, and for a minute I didn't think Mr. John Wallace would sell it to me. But he did though.

And all I could think of was the taste of the candy cane I'd et the day he'd shot his 'friend' Mr. Tom Bee for callin' him _John,_ 'thout no _Mr. _in front of it.

It was years ago now, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

Wonder why it's so much easier to remember the bad things than the good ones?

At least Mr. John Wallace hadn't _killed _Mr. Tom Bee… and Pa hadn't killed me… and I think he would have, 'stead of just sayin' I's dead, if I hadn't been his son.

Prob'ly even if I'd been white.

But I knew I had to leave, 'cause Pa's unlikely to show me that grace again the next time I cross him, and that's somethin' I'd be sure to do was I to stay around near Strawberry, 'cause I just somehow can't get my head 'round to thinkin' like Pa does. Sho can't.

And shuckies, now here I was takin' the bus. I purely hate to ride any bus, since that day Miss Hattie and Grace Anne— since that day that ole bus went off the Soldier's Bridge into the Little Rosa Lee, but I ain't had no choice. I'd've loved to have accepted Stacey Logan's offer of a ride into Jackson in that fine maroon car of his, that'd once belonged to Miz Jamison… but I—well, I guess I wouldn't want to lose his good opinion of me, such as it is, by sobbing on his bosom that I didn't want to leave him. Better we should part like we done, calm and friendly-like.

Sides, if Stacey Logan had'a tooken me into Jackson, Sheriff Dobbs wouldn't'a been able to pretend any more that I was tellin' the truth when I said I didn't know Moe Turner was on my truck. I'm lookin' at my hands as I write this, and they are white. And it shames me.

I am white, and blonde, and pale. I don't even tan in the summer, just burn red and freckle, and then go back to ghost pale. And my hair bleaches out.

And if I were dark like Stacey I'd be dead this minute, and Moe Turner with me.

It isn't right, the way things are.

Stat had no call to be messin' with Moe or Clarence Hopkins either.

Why should any man have to take that from any other?

I know that's the way of things…

**_…but it SHOULDN'T be!_**

* * *

I envy Stacey, and I always have. Them Logans are like no other family I ever seen. Tight. Stacey and Cassie, Christopher-John and Clayton Chester (that used to be called Little Man, but now insists he's too grown up for it, and I call him Clayton, 'cause he got the right to say how he's to be called), they stick together like cockleburs. I wouldn't'a knowed brothers and sisters could be like that… mine aren't… close to me that way. Which is just as well.

And Stacey ain't never had to make excuses for his Pa, 'cause Mr. David Logan— he don't do things that need excusin',' and Mr. Logan would never say to Stacey or any o'them, 'You're dead to me.' I know that's true, even though I hardly ever spoken to him, and I know he ain't never approved of me, nor wanted his children to be friends with me. Even so, I wish—I wish Mr. David Logan had been my Pa.

But he ain't.

And even Pa ain't anymore according to Pa, so… I kept on tryin' to walk by my own wobbly self, and walked right into the recruiting office in Jackson and signed on up to go to war.

I didn't rightly know where Japan was, nor Germany and Italy neither, but it didn't matter none.

I had the clothes on my back, the jackknife and ball of string in my pocket, and $4.87 to my name.

Nothin' else.

Not even myself, since I done signed myself over to Uncle Sam.

The recruiting sergeant gave me a little booklet called The Soldier's Handbook. I read it from cover to cover. It said the army's my family now, and I hope that's true, 'cause it's the onliest one I have.

On the information form inside the book, there was a line asking for a 'beneficiary.' That's a person stands to get six months of my pay was I to die. I stared at that line a full minute, then wrote the name 'Stacey Logan,' and on the line for relationship 'friend.'

Don't know why I done that, 'cept… it eased me some, to see his name writ there.

With any luck though, he'll never know, 'cause I have no intentions of dying.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: **There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys,_ it is all hell._ – William Tecumseh Sherman

**Disclaimer: **I'm a lover, not an owner. Please purchase the whole canon. No offense or infringement intended.

* * *

"This is war we are talking about, boys! And I do not believe you boys are ready. Because war means death! Ten, twenty, thirty corpses, right in a row. Have any of you ever seen that many dead bodies layin' out in the sun? Have you, Private Watkins?"

"No, sergeant."

"You, Private Boleski?"

"No, sergeant."

The big man's head whipped back and forth, surveying the line, almost angry now. "Anybody?" A pause. "Private Simms?"

A jolt of electricity shot through me. I stared straight ahead and shouted my answer, good and loud, like he'd taught us. "No, sergeant!"

"Hmmfph," he snorted, like he'd knowed it all along. "So you se—"

I weren't done though, "But I seen that many layin' out in the _rain_."

Dead silence greeted my interruption.

I could _still _see 'em, in my mind, though my eyes were on the horizon past the end of the exercise yard, like the Handbook said they should be. No sunshine on that gray afternoon, 'cept the yellow of Grace Anne's hair.

And it had ended up waterlogged and muddy on the creek bank.

Dead, all of them dead.

Every last passenger.

Every last one of them white.

Dead silence, there and here.

You coulda heard a pin drop, even though we were standing on the grass of the parade ground.

There were two ways the drill sergeant could take my interruption. As the truth, or as backlip. I braced myself. I knowed which way Pa would'a taken it, had he been there.

"Squad diss-MISSED!"

I was surprised, but not so surprised I ain't waited.

"Private Simms." The drill sergeant's voice was only jest loud enough so's I could hear it over the other men moving again.

I drew my eyes from the horizon back in towards him. "Sergeant?" _What had gotten into me? _

_Yet what I'd said was no more than the truth. _

"Did you really see thirty dead bodies lying out in the rain?"

I heaved a sigh and saw him nod as though I'd said yes. "I helped lay them out," I explained.

He wasn't angry at all. He looked so kind, so concerned, I wondered why anyone ever complained about their drill sergeant. I think I loved mine.

"When?" he asked. "What happened?"

I told him. About the bus, about the bridge, about the passengers dead in the water, and how we dragged them out of the bus, out of the creek, to lay them on the grass. It had been a pitiful sight.

I told it briefly, not the way I'd told it that time I'd been asked to write the whole thing out, but just the facts of the accident and the deaths.

"How old were you?"

"Ten."

The drill sergeant raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I was wrong, private. I guess you are ready to face this war, after all."

He touched my arm comfortingly, then walked away, but I just kept standing where I was, looking out at the horizon again, but what I saw was those white faces slack with death, turned blue, turning purple.

The sergeant was wrong.

I wasn't ready to see something like that again.

If that was war, then I _wasn't_ ready.

No, suh, sergeant. I wasn't ready a't'all.


End file.
